I caught the end of the lesson as usual, and it was a pleasing-looking movement.
I’m not sure whether the intermediate sequences are getting more accessible, or whether I’m making more sense of them by connecting more dots. We’ll see how I get on with Luis’ version on Thursday …
Continue reading Calesitas, chaos, criminal cabeceos and coronavirus contingencies
There’s a tradition in tango that you don’t dance the first song of a live performance, as a courtesy to the band: giving them your full attention. At Los Angelitos tonight, however, Martin Alvarado specifically asked people to dance from the first song – but it seemed nobody was going to accept the invitation.
I looked at the empty floor, looked across to one of my favourite followers, looked around at the very large number of people sat around the dance floor – then decided the opportunity was too good to be defeated by feelings of self-consciousness …
Continue reading Another tango first: the only couple on the floor for the first half of a song
Drunk tango can be a lot of fun; hungover tango, not so much.
After very much over-indulging with neighbours on Friday night, I was still feeling exceedingly delicate by the time my private started at 4.30pm on Saturday. The first song was so bad I think Julia was planning to send me back to the first beginner’s class …
Continue reading Calesita and planeo fun, despite an unpromising hungover start!
In Luis and Natalia’s intermediate class, we’d been playing with the contra-giro over the past few weeks, so they decided to do the same with the giro tonight. Or, more specifically, a medio-giro.
You can obviously enter a giro from any step – forward, backward or either side. The version I’ve used so far has been from a side-step, and the one we used tonight was from a back ocho. We played with a few different variants …
Continue reading Connecting some dots, and returning home to Tango Terra
If Tango Terra and Los Angelitos are the milongas that make me feel like a grown-up, The Light is the one that made me feel like a toddler! It was the highest level dancing I’ve ever seen in London.
I danced exactly three tandas, all with the same friend. The rest of the time, I just watched …
Continue reading A trip to The Light, a milonga way above my pay-grade
I love that milonga so much.
Emerging after four hours of almost non-stop blissful dancing, you feel like it’s about 2am. But it’s still 8pm, and even allowing the obligatory blog post and time needed for the buzz to wear off, you can still be in bed at a civilised hour …
Continue reading Mmmm … Tango Terra! And a more streamlined approach to the blog. Maybe.
Sometimes lessons can pay unexpected dividends some time later. There can be things I didn’t really grasp at the time, which later make sense. Or things I thought were minor points, which subsequently reveal themselves to be far more important.
There was one of the latter in a private with Maeve. Indeed, I didn’t even include it in the blog post at the time, as it just felt like a reminder of something I already knew …
Continue reading Something else clicked: a way to encourage weight-sharing
